Just Like Starting Over
by TrenchcoatsAreSexy
Summary: Sequel to "Starting Point" & "Renewal". House & Wilson both rehabilitate.


**Just Like Starting Over**

Wilson instantly regrets choosing a rehab that's placed in the middle of the wilderness. He probably wouldn't regret it if his stint had happened in mid-March, but as it is, it's the middle of July. He hadn't read over the brochures when Amber had dumped them on his chest, he'd just agreed – without realizing that it was in the woods, and that he hated the woods.

As he smacks another mosquito that's feasting on his arm, he wonders if he ever told her and, if so, she purposely chose this one to get revenge. That first day after the detox, he counts fifteen mosquito bites and a few more from bugs of unknown species. He itches all over and when he scratches, huge blots of infected scabs show up on his leg, and he wonders whether he'll have permanent scarring.

At least, he reminds himself, he's not thinking about alcohol. Or what he's coming home to. Or what he's done to his best friend and girlfriend, not to mention himself. Instead, he's counting bites and scabs and rashes – that one's probably poison ivy though he's not sure where he would have run into it.

One day down, eighty-nine to go.

* * *

><p>"I think it's hypothyroidism," House declares, pointing up at the X-Ray that Foreman has placed on the overheard projector. He smirks proudly after he says it, realizing that he's become less and less dependent on Amber for finishing his thoughts over the last few weeks. He still depends on her for coordination, though, and has taken to sarcastically calling her his seeing-eye dog.<p>

"Or walking-eye dog," Amber tends to add with a matching smirk; but he still hasn't gotten her name right.

"But some of these symptoms still don't match," Foreman argues, circling a few on the whiteboard.

"Actually, they do," House retorts, and he stands. The diagnostician – former diagnostician, still, technically, as he's still not officially on the payroll – walks to the whiteboard and crosses out a few symptoms. "Side effects of the drugs we put her on when we _thought_ it was botulism."

"House may be right," Amber chimes in, "If so, we ought to start treatment – see what happens and we'll know within a few hours, right?"

"How's Wilson doing?" Kutner cuts in, looking over at Amber. She shrugs, a bit uncomfortable.

"Still on vacation," she replies – only House and Cuddy know that he's actually in rehab, and she'd rather it be kept that way.

* * *

><p>The second week, Wilson gets heatstroke while hiking through the woods. He's surprised to find that he enjoys it at first – the taste of nature, and he's seen a few odd sights such as random chipmunks and even some turtles sunning themselves on a tire that's floating in the midst of a murky pond. But despite the shade, the heat gets him, and Wilson has never been good with heat.<p>

He's lurched over in a corner and wishing he knew how close he was to a working toilet; nausea runs through him and he's sure some invisible person just socked him in the gut. _If this is God or somebody's way of punishing him for ignoring House, well, then, He's doing a very good job of it._

Wilson thinks he'll die for a bottle of water, and when someone brings him one he downs it like he's been trekking the desert for years and had thought he'd never get out alive. When someone gives him another, he pours it over his face and rubs it into his hair before he starts vomiting.

Wilson thinks that he should have remembered that he really hates the heat.

* * *

><p>"When is Wilson coming home again?" House asks for the third time that hour, and he feels like kicking himself for the way that he'd tormented Foreman after he'd gone through similar difficulties two years before. He knows he must be annoying Amber, but she's remarkably good at not showing it.<p>

"August 28th," she replies again, followed by a smile. "Are you excited, House?" House nods, trying not to show the irritation he feels with himself and his own inability to adequately remember.

"Yeah," he says quietly, a rare moment of emotional honesty. "I miss him."

"He'll be back soon, House. Come here?" Amber gestures towards the couch in House's office, the one Cuddy refused to give away even when Foreman was promoted to the job. She had always insisted that House would come back, when he was ready to – and here he was, living proof.

House sits down next to Amber and she wraps her arms around him, hugs him tight.

He's surprised, not for the first time, that he doesn't pull away. The injury and the struggle has made him seek physical comfort instead of avoid it, and his blue eyes meet hers as she promises again that Wilson will be back very, very soon. And insists that he can ask for that reassurance as many times as he likes.

* * *

><p>The fifth week, Wilson makes a resolve to be nicer to Amber and House when he gets home. He regrets every nasty thing he ever said to either of them, regrets every time he gave House advice and House didn't follow it and he snapped at him for it, regrets every time he raged at Amber for some little insignificant fault in the days after House's injury.<p>

Because this is hell. Day after day he works through courses, "nature courses", that are supposed to foster in him some kind of leadership ability, a way to kick the shit out of his addictions for good and own them. Instead, it just makes him wish he were home and makes him make more promises to every God he could potentially believe in to just let him go home.

But he sticks it out.

In the sixth week, he begins to not mind the walks so much. They give him time to think, time to remember. Time to remember Amber's soft blonde hair and the way she'd look at him with those deep blue eyes. He hasn't looked at her, really looked at her, since this thing happened to House.

Now, he can't get her face out of his head. He decides that when he gets home, he will never ignore her again, and never ignore House again. They are his life. They are his world. But he needs to get out of here first….

* * *

><p>"We have a situation," Foreman tells Cuddy, jerking his head in the direction of the clinic waiting room. When Cuddy steps outside, she sees the situation; all six-foot-four of him, in fact.<p>

"Tritter." Cuddy's face falls as she murmurs the name. "Excuse me, Detective?"

"Yes?" Tritter inquires, looking up from the newspaper that he's reading, pulling his head out of a headline that reads PATHMARK SHOOTER STILL ON THE LOOSE.

"May I speak with you in private?" She leads him over to a clinic room and shuts the door. "You've been assigned Dr. House." Before Tritter can get his response out of his mouth, she continues, "Dr. House had a traumatic brain injury last year. While he is perfectly capable of performing medicine as of recently, he… has trouble placing people occasionally. I wanted to warn you that he very well may not recognize you."

Tritter doesn't know quite what to say to that, and is convinced that it's probably just another weird House game, another bizarre gambit to get back at him for the investigation. He's sure when he sees House, the jig will be up but he smiles understandingly at Cuddy instead and promises he'll behave himself.

So when he walks into the clinic room after his name is called, he's shocked when House looks at him with not a hint of recognition.

"What can I help you with?" he asks, with the same disinterest of that first clinic visit.

He really doesn't know him.

"I just need a physical… for the police force." He locks eyes, sure the doctor will make some connection.

"Oh really?" House replies cockily. "What are you, the CSI?"

Tritter gives it up; the game isn't any fun when the other person doesn't know they're playing.

* * *

><p>In the ninth week, Wilson wanders out into the woods and gets lost. He decides, in his wisdom, to take a leak by a clearing that consists of the bank of a creek and a few little tufts of land.<p>

He immediately regrets this decision when he hears a low rustle behind him, then in front of him, and then… then… _oh shit._

He looks ahead and realizes – and he laughs hysterically as he does – that he is peeing directly on the wolf. The beast has come to him, and it's not even a metaphorical beast, some weird and ironic manifestation of the addiction that has taken over his days. It's an actual wolf, with huge teeth and a look in his eyes that signifies that he's about to sign Wilson's death warrant.

Thankfully, in a moment, Wilson has stopped laughing and started running, as quickly as he can.

He can think only of Amber and House, how much he regrets and how much he wishes he were running to them, not back to the rehab, not back to all of the wrong he's done.

He checks another day off the calendar and wonders what Amber and House are doing right now.

* * *

><p>It's been 90 days, 3 months, and 12 weeks when Wilson is released to go home. To go back home to… he's not quite sure. When he pulls up to the apartment he has a strange sense that maybe, when he knocks on the door, he will discover that Amber has just moved in the interim, quit her job and taken House (or left him with his mother or Cuddy or someone) and left no forwarding address, or even a key. He wonders if he even has the key, still.<p>

He gropes in his pocket for it and to his relief it's still there – he must have put it there when he left but he doesn't remember it.

The key almost flows into the lock, like molten metal into a mold, and when he turns it he's surprised to see it open. He's surprised to step inside –

He's not so surprised to see Amber and House cuddling on the couch watching TV.

He's been replaced, and he wants to turn – to run before he's noticed, before he can impede. He turns on his heel and makes his way, not sure what his next move could be but knowing he needs to make one, needs to make a decision –

Amber's voice rings out, like a song, like an anthem.

"James? Come join us?" she asks.

"There's room?" Wilson's response is halting, confused… he's not even sure what it means, but it's two words, shocked or sarcastic, he can't be certain. But he says them even as he turns to go.

"There's always been room," Amber replies. She pats the seat, and he turns back. And takes just one step forward at a time.


End file.
